Elated: a general-purpose web-based client for the Fedora Repository System

[go to SourceForge Site]

Table of Contents

Requirements 

ELATED requires the following:

These requirements are meant to match Fedora's requirements as much as possible. Please note that Java, Tomcat and ELATED need to be installed on the same machine, while MySQL and Fedora may be hosted on separate machines.

Installation process 

The following installation process describes the process of installing ELATED only; for information on installing Fedora, MySQL, Tomcat or the JDK, please see the vendor installation instructions.

Step 1: download files

Download and unpack the ELATED distribution file from SourceForge.

Step 2: install the application

Drop the elated.war file into the Tomcat webapps/ folder and restart Tomcat. Tomcat will unpack the elated application automatically.

IMPORTANT: Fedora 2.0 and below ships with a version of Tomcat that does not support the compilation of JSPs. As a result, ELATED must be installed in a different Tomcat/Java web-app server.

Step 3: install the database

You need to create a database and run the script elated.sql. If you are familiar with MySQL and know how to do this already, you may use any system you like. If not, please follow the instructions below.

First, login to MySQL using an account that has permissions to create databases:

mysql -u [mysql administrator username] -p

Once you are at the MySql command prompt, create the database:

CREATE DATABASE elated;

Next, you need to set up a database access account. Select a username and password to use for the application to access the database and execute the following command in MySql:

GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE ON elated.* TO [new username]@[mysql host] IDENTIFIED BY "[new password]"

Now exit from mysql and run the database creation script elated.sql using the following command:

mysql -u [mysql dba user] -p elated < [path to file]/elated.sql

The database will be created and populated some default data.

Step 4: configure ELATED

ELATED's main configuration file is located at: [tomcat root]/webapps/elated/WEB-INF/classes/config.properties This file contains configuration parameters that tell ELATED where to locate the services it needs to run (Fedora, MySQL, etc). The configuration file contains comments describing each setting; please read these carefully.

Some Important proerties:

Step 5: start application and login

Restart Tomcat so the new configuration settings will be picked up. Then go to: http://[Tomcat server]:[port]/elated/

Under login/pass type: admin/admin You should be taken to a page entitled "My Collections." To access the server administration, click the "Administration" link in the page header. We recommend you change the administrator's password on the first login: click on "List Users" and then click on the admin username to bring up an edit user interface.

Step 6: Additional configuraton for "headless" servers

ELATED uses java libraries to generate thumbnails of image files, and some of these libraries rely on the operating systems's display system. If running ELATED on a server without a windowing sytem (e.g. a Linux box without X Server running), you will need to start Tomcat (or other servlet container) with a config parameter to let it know that there is no display system present.

The JVM parameter to do this is: -Djava.awt.headless=true, and this line can be added to your tomcat startup script. On Linux/Tomcat, it could be done by adding the following line to the top of catalina.sh:

export JAVA_OPTS=" -Djava.awt.headless=true "

Getting started 

Administration pages

The administration pages contain screens for adding, editing and removing users, creating shared collections, importing Fedora items into ELATED, and resetting the text-search indexes. The first tasks you will want to do are to add some users. Click on "Add Users", fill in the form, and click the "Submit" button.

Troubleshooting / support 

If you have problems with an install, please read any error messages displayed to the web browser carefully; they will often contain information with clues to what the problem is.

Don't forget to start Fedora!

You won't be able to get very far if ELATED cannot connect to Fedora, so make sure the Fedora server is running.

Duplicate items in a search results, or other weirdness in item lists

The text-search indexes might be corrupted. Please login as an administrator and rebuild the indexes using the button in the administration panel.

Fedora Resource Index not enabled

Elated uses Fedora's native system for object-to-object relationships to track and display collections. In order to work, the Fedora Resource Index must be enabled. The Resource Index "level" in the fedora.cfg file must be set to 1 or 2. The section of the file should look like this:

<module role="fedora.server.resourceIndex.ResourceIndex" class="fedora.server.resourceIndex.ResourceIndexModule"> ... <param name="level" value="1"/> ... </module>

Check the logs

The most useful information about problems encountered will be in the Tomcat logs under (by default: [Tomcat path]/logs), where ELATED records all problems encountered. Check the server logs for details if you encounter issues. Look for log entries labeled "WARN" or "ERROR"; entries labeled DEBUG and INFO can usually be ignored, although they can help to diagnose where and why a problem is occurring.

Note that ELATED logs fairly aggressively. To turn down logging, edit the file [tomcat root]/webapps/elated/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties. Change the line:

log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG,A1

to

log4j.rootLogger=WARN,A1

Contact us

For questions, please contact Eric Jansson at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE): eric.jansson(AT)nitle.org